The Wolf Of All Streets - BullyESQ, Twitter Legend and Cofounder of Arrow on the Importance of Privacy, the Ineptitude of Government, Triggering Crypto Twitter, Returning to Life After Isolation and More

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

BullyESQ, Twitter Legend and Cofounder of Alpha Marketplace and Arrow Privacy Coin and Scott Melker discuss the importance of privacy, why Bitcoin is not ideal for private transactions and privacy coins are better, Arrow Coin, the idea of "hategagement" on Twitter, the paradigm shift to working at home, why people are going to leave big cities, the failure of politicians, living in a post fact era, the benefits and downsides of Crypto Twitter, conspiracy theories and skepticism, Bill Gates, disillusionment with government as a result of the pandemic and much more. --- ROUNDLYX RoundlyX allows you to dollar-cost-average into crypto with our spare change "Roundup" investing tool, manage multiple crypto exchange accounts in one dashboard and access curated digital asset content and services. Visit RoundlyX and use promo code "WOLF" to learn more about accumulating your favorite digital assets when making everyday purchases and earn $4 in free Bitcoin. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 6% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

What's up, everybody? This is your host, Scott Melker, and you're listening to the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Every week, I'm talking to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, politics, and basically anyone else with an interesting story to tell. So sit down, strap in, and get ready, because we're going deep. Let's go. I'd like to thank my sponsors, Round the X and Voyager, for making today's episode possible. We'll hear much more about them later on in the episode. This podcast is powered by BlockWorks Group, the only events and podcast production company I trust. For access to the premier digital asset conferences and in-depth podcast content, visit them at blockworksgroup.io.

I promise you will not be disappointed. This marks the first time that I've had an anonymous guest on the show. Bully Esquire was one of my first and favorite follows on crypto Twitter. Perhaps it's my slightly left of center leanings and penchant for sarcasm that drew me to his account, but I've convinced my entire family and even my no-coiner friends to follow him over the years. My wife actually says that he's her favorite follow on Twitter. He's a corporate lawyer with deep roots in the crypto space and the Zach Morris from Saved by the Bell with a huge night at the Roxbury white cell phone avatar that you've likely come to love.

I'm really interested to find out who he really is, which is why he was actually one of the first people I asked to come on the show before I even started recording them. So Bully, thanks so much for taking the time out of your very, I'm sure, busy isolation schedule to talk. Yeah, no, thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Scott. Yeah, of course. So I know that you are a lawyer and a corporate lawyer at that. So I'm just wondering how you live with yourself. Well, you know, I guess it's that sort of constitutional premise that everyone's entitled to a defense, right? And maybe some people are willing to pay for it. So there you go. That's where I fit in. Do you do white collar defense? Is that primarily what you do?

No, I actually don't do any white collar defense. I started my career out litigating, doing some of that work. And I just, I didn't like it as sort of sharp elbowed as my Twitter personality can be. In real life, I'm actually a pretty nice guy, surprisingly. And I found litigation to be really draining. So eventually, I kind of transitioned over to more corporate work, focused mainly on technology companies, helping them incorporate and get all the sort of necessary documents in place, raise funds, negotiate contracts, that sort of work. So I do a lot of corporate formation and just general corporate law. And then I have a kind of a subspecialty in payments, fintech and cryptocurrency. So it's kind of a three-headed beast there.

Do you work for yourself or are you like part of a firm or a small group? I'm at a law firm. I hesitate to say too much more than that. Of course, I'll leave it there. But yeah, no, I'm at a law firm. So I have a lot of various colleagues that I can bounce ideas off of. Or if I have a tax question, for instance, I can ask them because I don't know the first thing about tax law. So it's helpful to have some folks down the hall I can rely on. Honestly, it seems like nobody has any idea about tax law since the code changes every three months.

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, some people... I had a few friends who did it at a law school. I'm like, man, what are you thinking? It sounds like the most boring practice in the world, but people, I mean, people like it. The thing I have heard about tax laws, especially on the corporate side, like M&A, it's not like you're doing, you know, 1040 filings with the IRS. Like tax lawyers in the M&A world are really primarily focused with structuring the deal because most of the time, deal structure relates to tax, which relates to how much money people are saving. So the tax guys actually play kind of an integral role in the M&A work, which I do. Right. Because you have to imagine that the tax implications of the deal play very

heavily into whether it's actually going to be profitable or make sense. Yeah, exactly. And then when you get into cross-border stuff and the various basis you get from buying and selling businesses, it gets incredibly complex. And a lot of people have built their entire career just doing solely sort of cross-border tax for corporate M&A work. And yeah, again, it sounds like something that would put me to sleep, but these guys love it. So you realize there's no such thing as cross-border anymore, right? Yeah. No, it's true. I mean... We don't get to go anywhere. Yeah. I don't think there's cross-border even within states anymore. It's just you stay in

your house and that's that. It's pretty crazy. So I know that, you know, from obviously following you for a long time, that one of the things you take very seriously and discuss often is privacy. And I find it really interesting, I guess, even specifically in the crypto space, how the term private sort of has a negative connotation. Like when you talk about privacy, it's as if the government thinks if you want privacy that you must be on Silk Road buying crack or something like that. And really, it's a, I mean, it's a constitutional right that's guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment, right? So, I mean, why is privacy something that you obviously preach and take so seriously? Well, I think you sort of hit it on the head there, Scott, with the Fourth Amendment and privacy, particularly in American culture,

is sort of imbued and built in our ideals, right? There's a preponderance on the government. There's a burden on the government that if it wants information from us, that it has to have reasonable cause or meet whatever applicable burden necessary to get access to that information. But over the years, you know, you saw the Bank Secrecy Act, and then the Patriot Act after 9-11, and even sort of the COVID contact tracing stuff that's happening today as we speak, there seems to be this trend towards folks giving out more and more privacy, whether it's transactional privacy, whether it's sort of data privacy and security, or whether it's just personal privacy, location data, that sort of thing, to just giving it up to the government or large corporations in the hopes that somehow

that's going to make them safer. And there's that, you know, famous founding father's quote that says, the person that sacrifices their liberty for safety will get neither, which I find very compelling. It's like, the government is not your friend. The government exists, and it has a very beneficial purpose to society, which is to create laws and enforce them. It's not to protect you or to try to create some life for you. That's your obligation as an individual and a free person under the Constitution. So, I feel like the whole narrative's just kind of been perverted over the years to suggest that the more privacy we give up, the more rights we give up, somehow the safer we'll be. You know,

after 9-11, we all just started tolerating these random searches at the airport. We started tolerating the government listening to our phone calls and intercepting data. And at first when the Snowden stuff came out, it's like, well, it's only calls that are happening internationally. So I can sort of understand that. And then over, over the years, you know, there's these secret courts and people have sort of forgotten about the Patriot Act and all of these Guantanamo Bay. And I mean, it's just like everywhere you look, it seems like everything is just being compressed and whittled away until like everyone's just standing naked before their maker,

which now is the government or Facebook. Right. Yeah, exactly. And what's interesting is that people don't, you know, it's kind of a big deal when that uh legislation or those ideas are passed the patriot act and such they're never reversed right ever yeah once you get those right in one direction exactly forget about it i mean and it happens the same way like with the government you know the legalization of alcohol for example it was tried to you know they tried putting that lion back in the cage with prohibition and it didn't work. And now you're seeing a similar trend with marijuana. And, you know, I won't get into that. I have my own views on that.

I mean, you can. Yeah. So, listen, I don't think people should go to jail for pot. I agree. to jail for pot. I'll just leave it at that. Because I think if we get any deeper on that subject, people will give me shit on Twitter about it. Because you need something else for people to give you shit on Twitter. Don't give them an excuse. It's a constant stream of nonsense on Twitter. But, you know, back to my point, and I think your original question, it's like, there seems to be the stigma these days with a lot of people. And, you know, there are ways to allow the government to, you know, get the data it needs to properly enforce laws while maintaining privacy. I helped launch Arrow is with the Bank Secrecy Act and FinCEN's regulations and all of these sort of complex anti-money laundering rules, you know, the government needs some exposure or some

ability to be able to review certain transactions. So, you know, obviously, the US government has an interest not to let, say, Iran have access to the global banking system. So these systems operate in a way to prevent those types of things from happening. So allowing Al Qaeda to pass money through the global banking system. So obviously, they're watching crypto very closely because they don't want crypto used as a way to circumvent sort of these global checks on international terrorism, money laundering, slavery, stuff like that. And those are understandable goals for the government to maintain. But at the same time, you know, I'm not sure you need complete transparency in the financial system. So I made this point on Twitter the other day.

And I think I actually, I sort of borrowed this idea from Zuko, which is, if you get paid, imagine a situation where you are paid in Bitcoin by your employer, or you take a contracting job, and he or she pays you a Bitcoin for some programming work or something. Right. And then you go to the coffee shop and you buy a coffee with Bitcoin, or you have another job you're doing with your vendor and you pay him in Bitcoin. Whoever you pay with that Bitcoin, if you don't use some sort of shielding mechanism or change the wallet address or do something, the person who receives the Bitcoin at the final step of the transaction will be able to see how much money you were paid, when you were paid it, who paid it to you, and then potentially even trace it back farther. So, you know, Bitcoin is a very powerful instrument. And it's sort of the father

of the cryptocurrency space. And I have nothing but admiration for Satoshi and the network he built. But at the same time, I think a lot of people who aren't in cryptocurrency would not expect that outcome. And, you know, when you get into crypto, you're like, oh, people use crypto to buy drugs. Surely, you know, people aren't just like using this instrument that can be completely traced back to whomever spent it. But that's not the case with Bitcoin because it's a completely transparent network and all of these transactions are immutable on the blockchain for all time. So when Satoshi first launched the network in 2009, people, I mean, even if you read the white paper, it talks about how it's sort of quasi-private, right? Like no one's name is attached to their Bitcoin address.

But over time, these sort of sophisticated sort of consulting agencies came up like Chainlink, I think, or I forget the name of chain analytics or something. Definitely not Chainlink. Right, no, it's not Chainlink. Link what? Link what is link? So there's these sort of like powerful analytical tools that can unpack and sort of detangle the blockchain and go back and figure out who sent what, where, when. And then, you know, you have Coinbase giving up thousands of names and addresses to the IRS. So the IRS could work with these analytical tools and

detangle almost every aspect of the blockchain network. So, you know, over time, the blockchain network that Bitcoin is built on has become less and less private. And that's okay, I think, for a lot of people. You know, if your goal is, I'm going to hold a couple Bitcoin because I think it's a hedge against inflation, it's a store of value, that makes a lot of sense to me. And maybe you are sophisticated enough that you can send it to a few different addresses. That makes a lot of sense to me. And maybe you can are sophisticated enough that you can send it to a few different addresses or, you know, go through some other network that will shield the transaction. Fine. I think, but most people, if they're using Bitcoin as a means of payment, it doesn't make much sense. So obviously Zcash was built to create this shielded network where people could send transactions.

And then when you looked at the blockchain, you couldn't actually tell who was sending who to what. But the problem with that is no one actually 0.4% of all Zcash transactions were fully shielded. And that was really surprising to me that the best feature of Zcash, the shielded ZK-SNARK technology, no one actually used. So really, it was just Bitcoin because Zcash is just a fork of Bitcoin. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So if no one's using the layer, it's just Bitcoin with fewer transactions, which makes it ironically, even less private, because the smaller the transactional pool, the easier it is to kind of detangle the transactions that occur. So do you think that's because people were like, like most cryptos, it was effectively only being used by speculators and traders because they

were buying a selling and or moving it because they thought, you know, they'd be able to sell it for more later and they weren't actually even aware of or using it for its intended purpose. Probably. I mean, I, so I understand that there's a technical reason too. My understanding was that the original ZK Snarks encryption method between two shielded wallets was relatively largely computationally intensive. So if I sent you one, like if we did a fully shielded transaction, I'm going to get these numbers wrong, but it was something like 300 kilobytes it would take,

or maybe it was even three megabytes or it was something like pretty large for just one transaction. And that meant that when people were building the infrastructure, when third parties were building wallets, they're like, that'll slow everything down. That'll gum up the network. Let's just do the transparent addresses. And then people can sort of send it to their own shielded address. But as we know, like opt-in privacy never really works.

So, you know, people didn't use it. And then I think exchanges were nervous about the shielded nature of the Z addresses because they didn't want to inadvertently run afoul of these KYC rules. And if their regulator came in and said, well, where's this money going? And they said, ah, we don't know because it's a shielded transaction. They were probably nervous about that. So I think it was a combination of the computationally intensive nature of the ZK snarks and then sort of enforcement issues related to exchange listings. Yeah. I never really thought about that. Why would an exchange allow it? I mean,

that's going the Charlie Shrem route, right? To put yourself at risk of being accused of Silk Road transactions or illicit behavior as a result of money being moved through your exchange. I actually never really thought about that aspect of it. That makes a lot of sense. So how is Arrow different then? Yeah, no, it's a good question. And it sort of begs the question, well, if Arrow is fully shielded, how do you get on exchanges? And so, you know, one really kind of revolutionary thing that ZK Snarks, well, the Zcash network implemented was, well, it's two things. One was they do what's called a view key. So if you're in control of the wallet address of a particular wallet for Zcash and for Arrow, you can view the transactional

details related to even shielded transactions. So it's almost like a master key to be able to view the transactional details. So if you're an exchange and the regulators come and say, well, weren't these shielded? You can say, no, I mean, they were shielded to the individual who sent them, but we can actually provide you data. If you think one of them may have been on sort of a terrorist watch list or something, we can get you the data for that transaction. That's one way. And then the second way is, there's actually a memo field, which is a kind of a really cool little feature built in to shielded wallets on both Arrow as well as on Zcash is, it's almost like a check memo.

You know, when you write a check in the bottom left-hand corner, there's that little memo spot, and you can write whatever you want in there sort of as a reminder. But I think it's like 280 characters or something, and so you can insert anything you want in that little memo field, and the recipient gets it. So the idea is when an Arrow or a Zcash shielded transaction goes from the exchange to a private wallet, the exchange would put something in the memo field indicating where it went and where it was going. Just so if they needed to show the regulator where those transactions originated from, that detail would be included in the memo field.

So those two attributes are how Zcash as well as Arrow are able to both be fully shielded as well as completely compliant with existing KYC, AML, and FinCEN rules, which is pretty nifty. And part of the reason we were so drawn to Zcash, and that's why we forked it. Now, you know, there are other privacy coins, which may not have those attributes, which could lead to regulatory pressure in the future. I won't speculate on that, but... On Arrow. Yeah. So that was one of the reasons we built Arrow was we were like,

well, we can make every transaction fully shielded. So on the Arrow network, there's no even option to do a transparent address. The only time there is a transparent transaction is when the coin is mined just for auditing purposes. So, you know, people can see that the proper number of coins are actually being created as part of the proof of work process. But other than that, everything that occurs on the Arrow network is fully 100% shielded. That's really cool. And Arrow, obviously, you've announced recently. So Arrow is not your only project in the space. Although I guess your new project is a little more fintech in general,

which is the alpha market, which you just announced this week. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Sure. And it's funny that that memo field I was just talking about, that was sort of the idea behind Alpha Market. So what I did in the Arrow Discord was I did this little giveaway where if people sent me an arrow, they could put something in the memo field and then enter a contest where I'd randomly pick one of the memo fields. And then I'd tweet whatever was in the memo field. People could basically tweet as me. And I got something like 11 entrants or something. And so the person who won decided to have me tweet out a link to his SoundCloud and play his music. So like 98,000 people got to see that.

So I was like, well, that's kind of a cool idea that people might be able to... You might almost be able to automate that, right? If you set a limit for how much you wanted someone to pay for your tweet, you could say, well, I charge $500 for someone to be able to tweet. And so if they sent the appropriate amount of cryptocurrency with that memo field filled in, then I'd tweet it. And then we kept kind of brainstorming on that. And there's actually some interesting stuff in Ethereum right now happening where people are tokenizing their time or tokenizing their personhood, which is kind of a head trip. That's interesting. Yeah. So the idea was like people were doing like personal ICOs. So they'd be like,

I'm going to have 100 Bully tokens. And I can say, well, Bully token means one hour of my time. So they'd be valued at 500 bucks a token. And then I'll sell those and then people can set up a time with me and I'll burn the token after they use it. And then it'll sort of be this means of exchange, almost like a utility token where each token represents an hour of your time. That's interesting. Yeah. And there's another side of it too, where people are like, and I think a professional athlete did this recently.

Yeah, that's Jim Witte. Yeah. Yep. Where he said, I'll basically do a personalized SEO, sell tokens, and then those tokens will basically get dividends in the future based on my earning potential. And so that, I mean,

I practice securities law from time to time. Obviously, there's a little bell going off in my head that that's a future earnings of somebody else, which triggers the Howey test, which probably means that that's a security. So, you know, we were kicking around all these ideas and, you know, we're like, well, do we even need a token i don't think we do we could probably just make a place where people could come and sell their time by the hour project or whatever and then we're like well why don't we just make a little marketplace where developers and freelancers and graphic designers consultants or even like trading experts, people with paid groups or algo bots or, you know, discord channels or whatever could go and advertise their services. And then people

could sort of comb through the various listings and pick something they like and, and sign up for it. And so we're like, well, fuck it, let's just go build it. And, you know, we spent a couple months and some of our own cash, and we were able to put it together pretty quick. And, you know, we spent a couple months and some of our own cash and we were able to put it together pretty quick. And we're like, let's just launch it. You know, I've worked on a lot of projects over the years where we carefully scope them and we build this business plan and this pretty deck and, you know, we spend all this time and then it falls apart or we don't do anything. And so this one, I was like, I'm just going to build something and it might not be perfect, but I'm just going to ship it. And so that's,

that's what we were thinking with this one. Crypto Dale helped me with it. And so it's just us two working on it really with the help of some developers. And yeah, we were able to kind of get it out and get the payment mechanism through Stripe integrated. You know, some folks have said, well, you don't have crypto. I mean, you're in the crypto space. Why don't you accept crypto?

That's like the number one thing on our to-do list, our roadmap, if you will. And that's one thing we're really focused on. And so hopefully in the next couple months, we'll have a crypto payment option. But we were just like, well, it's either just get it out the door now or wait another couple months. And we're like, well, let's just get it out the door and then we can add crypto later. So that's sort of where we were at. I think people in this space are a bit more forgiving in that regard as well. It's not like you're going out for VC funding and trying to source millions of dollars to launch it. So I think you can, especially as a part of this community, that you can pretty

much put it out there and let the community decide and also probably help you to evolve it to the point where it's viable. Yeah. No, for sure. And people have been awesome. It's kind of a sharp elbowed space and I take a lot of shit in the space, rightfully so, because I sort of seek it out and of course I'm fine. But yeah, like I think I tweeted the other day, you know, all of a sudden you actually produce something and people are like right there behind you to support you. And like, we had like dozens of signups our first day and it's been really cool seeing

like people have been retweeting it and supporting it. So yeah, thanks everyone who sort of jumped on it and helped me out and given feedback. Like we had some bugs submitted confidentially that we squashed. And that's what I mean. People, you know, that's what I mean. Put it out there and they'll actually help you as opposed to, you know, point out publicly everything that's wrong with it and make sure, oh, that's a risk. It's funny. You just talked about what the nature sort of, of this community. Sometimes I feel like you like are the type to, you know, put gas on a, on a car, throw a match and then leave the room. Yeah. I'm going to fire out this absolutely amazing hot take that I know is just going to

absolutely, you know, get everybody going wild and crazy. And then you just kind of walk away and don't even see what's happening. Yeah, no, that's sort of my style on Twitter. And I, I love that. I think somebody, somebody coined it, they called it hate gaugement, which is people, people just like love to sort of hate follow me, which is fine. I mean, I don't care if they want to argue with me, that's fine. I enjoy it. And it gives me engagement, which allows me to blast out my projects. It actually works in my favor, and I don't mind it. But no, it's, it's fun. I mean, I think, you know, my like food takes my politics, like all of it just sort of winds people up.

And a lot of that is sort of intentionally designed to get a rise. I was going to say clearly that, you know, you clearly say things that you don't necessarily mean much like many people, or you're on the fringe of your actual belief, just trying to test, test people's reaction. And it's, I mean, it is incredibly entertaining for myself on my own account, but like on yours, perhaps the best thing is not even your, your tweets, but the, the way that people respond. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, it's amazing. Mute is a powerful feature.

You can mute conversations. You can, I was joking the other day. Well, that's, that's lighting the match and walking away, right? You mute your conversation. You don't even see the responses. Yeah. And then there's a bunch of, you know, I have a bunch of clowns who are constantly chirping at me on my mention. So you just mute them and then they can talk forever and they help my engagement numbers, but I never see what they say. And it's, it's a beautiful feature. Um, so that's been kind of a strategy as well, but yeah, no, I mean, it's,

it's been really exciting and fun to launch this thing. And I do think right now, in particular, a lot of people, you know, work's changing. And like, I've been tweeting about this a lot, like Balaji on Twitter and others are talking about kind of how the COVID crisis is dramatically and rapidly rechanging sort of the way we view work and jobs. And, you know, there's 30 million Americans out of work right now. Airbnb just laid off a bunch of people, Uber, Lyft, there's all these tech companies laying off people. And that was one of the reasons we tried to ship AlphaMarket really quickly. It was like, you know, people, people need cash. And like,

if we can create a system that's super efficient and super quick, where you don't have to sit through six rounds of interviews at Airbnb, you know, you can just, you can post your job and someone finds it and they can hire you within an hour, you know, that, that helps everyone. And I mean, we're certainly not the first people to come up with the idea of like a services marketplace there's toptail there's upwork and others but we we were like well a lot of those sites are so big they have so much fucking noise that like you don't know who is where is what or what has what experience. That's why I was like, well, vertical marketplace focused on FinTech and crypto in particular would be

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potentially transitioning to work at home is going to affect the future? It's incredible. I mean, Twitter is like a $30 billion company or something. There have been companies that have been fully remote, I think like Automatic, the parent company of WordPress, and a few others. But it's been really rare. So to see a company as prominent and as large as Twitter be like, we're going fully remote forever is extraordinary. To me, that's like front page New York Times level sea change. And I don't think people are properly pricing that in, so to speak, into the future. Because, well, I mean, it just has massive secondary effects

on everything. Look at commercial real estate, like all of Twitter. Twitter probably has hundreds of thousands of square foot of prime real estate in San Francisco and elsewhere. And then, you know, all the employees who live in San Francisco and elsewhere. And then, you know, all the employees who live in San Francisco who fucking hate San Francisco, because in a lot of ways it's a big shithole that's really expensive, you know, can now be like, well, that's like one of your tweets. That was a perfect tweet. But like there's shit on the sidewalk, there's fucking syringes everywhere.

You know, the government's insane. I'm pretty liberal. And I see some of this stuff coming out of like the San Francisco City Council. And I'm like, my God, a couple, like a year ago, they tried to get rid of employee cafeterias because they thought it harmed local businesses. Stuff like, just like really bizarre stuff. So, you know, I'm sure a lot of people are itching to leave San Francisco and large cities in general. New York is another one.

I mean, New York got its ass kicked by COVID. It still is. Yeah. It lost tens of thousands of people. Just, I mean, due to mainly sheer population density, it's like, it's hard to really avoid other people in New York City. So, you know, if I'm living in San Francisco or New York and I'm a developer that's well paid and I can do my job in Austin or you're out. Yeah.

Why would I, why would I stick around? You know, maybe it's the amenities, maybe it's a social feature, but even that's changing. The social feature is going to be gone for at least a long time. Yeah. Yeah. So like, you know, make, make friends, make a few close friends that you can, you know, feel comfortable seeing and carry on with your life. And then, you know, as folks get older, uh, you know, we were talking about before we started recording about the kids, it's like, once you have kids, forget about it. You're not even going to consider living in a city unless you're super wealthy or have a very high tolerance for pain.

Yeah. It would be interesting to see if the salaries remain the same, regardless if the person remains in the city or moves. You would think that it would, but I mean, that a driver alone, I mean, why pay San Francisco or New York City rent if you can move elsewhere and make the same amount of money? I mean, historically, if you move to a smaller market for a job, you are paid accordingly. Yeah. Yeah. And big law. I mean, so I work in a large law firm environment and they've handled this situation just fine. I mean, the the compensation is either like they have different tiers for the market. So, you know, New York's tier one, Philadelphia's tier two, and then like Austin would be, or well, a smaller city would be tier three. And so, you know,

you just price your billables or the cost you're charging the client and the amount of money you make in accordance with those tiers. So that seems sort of like a sensible approach to me. It's like, okay, well, if you want to move to Austin, we're going to pay you a little less because your cost of living is less, but we'll bill you out to clients for less. And then that helps on the overall bottom line too. But Twitter is not going to reduce your salary if you were a San Francisco worker and decide to move to BFE Nebraska, right? Not apparently. I mean, I don't know. I mean, based on that press release today, it sounded like all bets are off. I mean, if you can do your job, do it and we'll keep paying you.

Or Bali, right? I mean... Right. Yeah. It's interesting how commoditized it becomes. And again, I don't mean to keep harping on the law firm model, but law firms are really comfortable with this, right? Like we, I bill by the hour, so I can really pick up my laptop. I can do it anywhere. I can work whenever I want, um, subject to the billable hours requirement or, you know, the amount of revenue I'm bringing into the firm. And that seems like a sensible approach for other industries to like, okay, if you have a proof of work requirement, like if you get your shit done and you do a good job and you're available when people need you, yeah. Like I don't understand why you'd have to be in an office every day. I mean, and there are like intangible benefits

to being in offices, which I'm sure we all know and appreciate. Of course. I mean, I have a friend who's a physician who I spoke to this week, who is a urologist, which, you know, he's never going to live down until the end of time. But, you know, he said, I mean, I love this Teladoc thing. He's like, I don't, you know, 50, 60, 70% of my patients, I have no reason ever again to see in person for some of their appointments. Like I'm going to continue doing this. Yeah. Why not? I mean, if you like the doctor's office is a dangerous place, especially if you're sick, like, you know, I have older folks and I've been harping on them for years to stay home if, unless they absolutely have to. And I think it's finally sunk in now with the media hysteria at my back. But you know, if, if you don't need to go into the doctor, yeah, I think it's a lot better outcome for everyone if you don't. I mean, you don't use

that gas. You're not a car on the road. You're not getting in car accidents. You're not gumming up. Yeah, there's a thousand reasons. To minimize risk. Yeah. I was thinking the other day, like maybe the reason we haven't encountered intelligent life is not because societies don't get sophisticated. It's because the more sophisticated societies get, the more they sort of go into themselves like VR and, um, you know, digital devices and remote working. Like why explore the stars when you can just like stay right here and put on a Oculus outfit and do whatever you want. It why explore the stars when you can just like stay right here and put on a Oculus outfit and do whatever you want.

It's funny. I thought you meant we hadn't encountered intelligent life in our country. Maybe that too. I'm still searching as well. So I've kind of watched your timeline since the COVID thing has begun. And it seems that you've evolved somewhat from, holy shit, we need to lock it down to this is a complete joke. Well, not a complete joke.

I know that you obviously understand it. But like even today, they announced, you know, that LA is likely going to go another three months. And I saw your comment that you thought that was absurd. So it seems like I said that you're kind of on this continuum towards getting back to life. You know, where do you stand at this point on how it's been handled? How and again, how actually being at home and working remotely with your kids around

and stuff, how that's been? Yeah, you know, I've been saying, I think we underreacted to begin with and are overreacting now. So, you know, back in when I was really freaking out was in January and early February. Yeah, you were early. And I was like, guys, like fucking lock it down. Like cut the flights, get tests. And that was the big, I think that's been the biggest clusterfuck so far is the testing. Because if you recall the CDC right away, I think in like mid-February,

I'd had to check the timeline, but they sent out this huge batch of tests. And then come to find out all the tests were fucked up and no one could actually use them. So that set us back like weeks. And all during that time, people were just out in the community walking around with this thing everywhere because we're a mobile country. So somebody goes to New York City and then they get on a plane, they go to Detroit, they have a burger and then they go to their home in Philly. You know, like it's it's so easy to get around before all of this really broke out that before we contained it, we we we blew our window.

So now it's like so then the next step was, okay, shit is really crazy. We completely fucked up the first part. So now let's all stay home for two weeks to a month, which represents one to two cycles of the virus, which is typically around 14 days to really flatten the curve, as they say, and prevent the hospitals from getting overwhelmed. Right. And we did that. So, I have a family member who works at a hospital and they're being laid off. Right. They're losing jobs. There's no fucking work. And it depends on the city. Some cities got slammed really hard,

like New York. I understand if you're in New York, your experience is probably a lot different than somebody in Houston. And that's just, I mean, that's a big country. And that makes sense that like different regions have different approaches. But at some point, you have to be like, okay, we have to start worrying about other impacts of this virus, namely the economic devastation that's currently occurring. I mentioned earlier that 30 million people are out of work right now, and that number is going to continue to rise dramatically as long as these lockdowns are in effect. And the longer it goes, the less likely they are to have those jobs to return to. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, you're not going to

beat a virus. And the goal with the lockdowns was never to beat this thing. We're not China, we can't just like shut down for two months. People still have to like some people still have to do their essential work. And so now it's like, what are we doing? Are we just going to stay in our house for the rest of our lives or until they have a vaccine? If we do that, there's not going to be an economy to come back to. And what really drives me nuts is there's like four people on Twitter who are super loud and say that if you even suggest reopening the economy, you want to kill grandma. You're this terrible conservative who's up at the courthouse with your AK-47 and you're just a nut job. But that's not true. I run in very liberal circles and everyone I talk to is like, this is insane. Like, why are 20-year-olds sitting at home when

they're not even really that much at risk for dying from this thing. The people who are really at risk are people 50 and older, 55 and older. Those people should be locked down. Nursing homes should be like Fort Knox right now. Yeah, I mean, that first thing I said in January is if I had a loved one in a nursing home, I would have brought them home. Yeah, exactly. Those are so dangerous. You look at the deaths. Like, I think I saw a chart from

New Jersey the other day, and maybe 8,000 people in New Jersey had died. I think like 60% of those deaths were in nursing homes. Yeah. That seems to be sort of an underreported trend. Right. So, it's like, it's old people and it's people with comorbidities. If you have diabetes, if you're fat, if you have heart disease, you know, these things put you at severe risk for dying. But if you're a healthy 20-year-old, the mortality numbers on these things are like 0.1%, which is similar to the flu. And so like, governing is about making hard choices and about compromising. So when I see these leaders who are like, my only concern is COVID, that's bullshit because you need to be balancing everything equally.

Whenever unemployment goes up, people die. People die of suicide. They die of malnutrition. They die of depression. So, you know, there's mortality on both sides of the dial. My point is like, eventually we're going to have to reopen things. Let's do it smart. Let's everyone wear masks. We'll social distance. We'll do it on phases. You just touched on my biggest issue though, which is I effectively agree with everything

you're saying in principle. The problem is I feel like I've been sitting in my house for eight weeks and literally not a thing has changed. You look at other countries, I'm not saying that we should do what China is doing or South Korea, any of them, but they took the time off to actually come up with a fundamental plan of how to reopen, how to track it, whether you agree with contact tracing or not, different conversation, but they actually had a plan on how they were going to do it. I feel like I have no more information than I did two months ago. I don't understand the virus, particularly in any better manner. I don't really know how far I can stay from someone. So that's one issue is that I just feel like we didn't make a plan. So

now it's like reopening out of boredom or laziness or just capitulation. And my other issue is that in other places, culturally, they respect each other's, you know, like they'll respect the social distancing, they'll wear masks. I mean, I had a guy come to my door today, ring my doorbell and like stand there with no mask on as if I was going to answer the door a foot away and start having a conversation with him about potentially like putting insecticide on my yard. Right. I mean, or so social distancing is only as good as the people who are around you, you know,

they're opening the pools here and saying you need to stay six feet away from each other in a swimming pool. Give me a break when a kid beans me in the face with a Frisbee and comes to get it. You know? So I think it's a cultural thing is that there's no plan here and there's no way to do it unless everybody follows the rules, whatever they are. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to have the government implant a chip in your brain, although there's probably people on Twitter who think they're doing that with a vaccine.

But there has to be some sort of way to do it. I just don't like, I want to reopen. I want to go back to life, but what does that even look like? Yeah, no, I, I agree with you. Every, every day that we're in lockdown should be an absolute horse race, fucking emergency five alarm fire that local state and federal governments are working hand in hand to create a comprehensive plan for reopening. Our local government, and again, I'm not going to say who that is, but we've been like, where the fuck's the plan? Like, there's no communication. There's no urgency. And it's just people are like, well, you guys just stay home another couple weeks. It's like, no, you can't just shut down the economy for two weeks without it hurting a lot of people. And if you're going to do that, you need to explain exactly why you're doing that and how we're going to get out of this thing carefully, cautiously,

and with minimizing both the economic and the human damage that's coming from, from both sides of this plan. Like we're all reasonable. We can all get behind instructions and understand plans, but we just, like you said, we need guidance. We need leadership and we're not getting that. That's why Cuomo's numbers are through the roof is because he seems like the only guy right now in the entire fucking country who has his hat on and was like, let's figure out a way to get past this and reopen things. Well, it's a rarity to see an accountable to some degree.

Yeah. Yeah. Trump's a fucking idiot. I mean, he's on he's on Twitter talking about how great his ratings are. It's like, well, fuck your ratings. We need leadership. We need people on there to tell us what to do. I mean, Dr. Fauci is doing a good job, but he's only as strong as the administration behind him who can't even stop COVID within its own ranks. So, you know,

you looked at this and you're like, well, no wonder we're in such bad shape. The people running the show are morons. Yeah. I mean the other thing is that i mean we touched on it but like you know even we can say this generally about the united states and the world but us specifically like we engage in a community crypto twitter that's largely full of like conspiracy theorists flat earthers flatthers, 5G whistleblowers, anti-vaxxers, right? So I think a huge problem that's really being manifested with this virus is that there's no such thing as a fact anymore. Even if you present a fact, there's someone else to present, whether it's an opinion or they believe it's a fact, there's an opposing fact.

So there's actually no way to even meet in the middle and decide what is true. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, we were approaching like sort of the post factual environment before. I mean, look at our government. Yes, of course. Yeah. And so that's why leadership from the top is pretty important right now i mean say what you want about crypto twitter i i do one one thing i sort of constantly struggle with i find reprehensible and admirable at the same time as this complete mistrust of government and over time i've kind of bought into that to some extent and i think all of the people who end up getting into crypto, like really getting into it. Yeah, drink the Kool-Aid eventually. Exactly. And like people end up in crypto because they're skeptical people, they're contrarians,

they don't believe something that people tell them necessarily. So I do think generally that mistrust of anything, mistrust of ideas, mistrust of common narratives or force fed narratives is a good thing. Right. I'm talking about a fringe element, not the entire community, of course, but no, like you said, there is that general vibe. For sure. Like, yeah, you're, you sort of alluded to it just now where Bill Gates is trying to insert tracking chips. Like, shut the fuck up.

Like, we're all trying to get a vaccine so we can get back to our lives. And if Bill Gates wants to throw $20 billion at that, bully for him, man. Like, I'm all for that. Yeah, of course. And like, I'm not going to shit on a guy for trying to help, you know, limit death from a. I think my favorite Bill Gates argument is that he's doing it to make billions while concurrently giving away all of his billions. No, brother. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know what to say to that. I think he's already crazy. He's already vowed to give away ninety nine percent of his fortune anyways after he dies. So what does he care? Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. He's already vowed to give away 99% of his fortune anyways, after he dies. So what does he

care? Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. And you know, it's that it's this, just this sort of cognitive dissonance. It was funny. I was watching or having a conversation with someone and they were saying, I have to vote for Trump because, you know, I believe Tara Reid, you know, I believe that Biden like touched her, did something inappropriate. And, and I had to be like, listen, I'm not even trying to get political, but you're voting for the guy who on a hot mic said, grab him by the pussy. That's what he does. The guy who openly admitted to, yeah, let's not get in a morality contest because Trump doesn't really have that good of a leg to stand on. So, I mean, and not to mention that the guy's like a self-obsessed idiot. So, I don't know. I mean, Biden's not my favorite choice. He wasn't even my third choice, but you know what? He's, I don't know. I mean, Biden's not my favorite choice. He wasn't even my third choice. But you know what? He's not the other guy. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, if that's what it you've actually moved more to the center politically? Or do you think that maybe people's perception of you has changed? It's funny, like, I, you know, I sourced questions jokingly on Twitter for this. And one of the people was like, how did you seem to go from liberal bully to conservative bully during the pandemic? So, you know, I'm getting older. There's that, there's that old adage about if you're not 20 and liberal, you don't have a

heart. But if you're not 40 and a conservative, you don't have a brain. And like, I've been on crypto Twitter for a while now. I think I'm in like year three or four. So people are getting like a pretty solid data set of my kind of snapshot reality from day to day. But I do think that me and frankly, some other people I know, our faith in government has been shaken to the core by this whole pandemic, from the botched response at the beginning, to the, I guess, grab for civil liberties at the end. Like, I've just been disgusted by the whole thing. And it has driven me away a little bit from sort of liberal ideology, namely that government can do a good job solving big problems. Like, that was sort of my general thesis of government before this whole thing started was I think business is very good at building new ideas and businesses and things like that. But the government is very good at handling large, complex issues like energy production or social security, health care, shit like that. But I mean, it's hard for me to say with a straight face anymore that the government can do anything after this. It's like, but maybe it's just, well, no, if you hire JV shitheads

for important positions and gut very important programs, this is the outcome you get, right? Like, I think they fired the pandemic team, like, six months before this happened or whatever. And now they're considering shutting, winding down the task force that they started, you know, because, you know, mission accomplished, this thing's over, obviously. Yeah, I mean, I share sort of that view.

I think, you know, with age comes a move to the center. I've seen it in my parents. I've seen it, you know, countless times. It's just, as you said, there's a general disillusionment with all of it. And that was something, as you touched on, that we always saw in the crypto community. But it is really interesting. I think your average Joe, to some degree now, is starting to wake up to that ineptitude of government, but also beyond that, the implications of printing money, helicopter money, and bailouts. When you're seeing it 12 years later after we saw

it the last time around, if you're around and you're seeing the repeat of the bailouts and too big to fail and all of that, I do think that maybe there is an awakening in society of the problems with the endless money printing and fiscal policy. And maybe not to go all maximalist, but maybe that's actually good for crypto finally. I mean, this is isn't this like the maximalist wet dream now? Yeah, you know, I'm not going to take joy in the potential unwinding of the economy. Of course. You know, it's a hard... I say that all the time.

I don't want to live in the Mad Max, like, future with hoarding my Bitcoin as the, like, in Gastown or whatever. Yeah. And seeing a lot of the people who have a lot of Bitcoin, I'm like, man, I don't want them to be in power. No, that's feel like over time, my ideology has stayed relatively consistent, which has always been, in my opinion, fiscal, conservative, social, liberal. And I know that's sort of kind of like people hear that.

It's a cliche, but I say it all the time myself too. So it's like, I, I care about the government being conservative with its spending. And I think that, which is not, but exactly. I mean, we're what, 23 trillion in debt. And we're, we're adding to that by the day. And, but on the other hand, like the government should say the fuck out of my affairs. Like if people want to get an abortion, that's their own problem. If you know, there's all of these sort of personal choices that should be left to the individual. So, neither party really hits those that well. Although I will say, historically, the Democrats have done a better job of balancing budgets. I think the last time the budget was balanced was under Clinton, right? So, you know, and Obama had to clean up Bush's mess, and I'm sure a Democrat will come

in and clean up Trump's mess. So maybe the Democrats are the party of fiscal conservatism, even though somehow they have this stigma of spending cash. But the deficits went from $16 trillion to $23 trillion under Trump in just four years. So I don't know how anyone could claim that. I think it's maybe what they spend the cash on that bothers people, not how much they spend at this point. Yeah. I mean, the government shouldn't be spending cash. It doesn't have to. I mean, you can't spend your way out of a pandemic. I understand the easing people's financial troubles, but I don't know. Yeah. But sending people $1,200 is basically a

bribe. When a couple hundred billion of the dollars go to all of Main Street and the entire country and all of the people who are out of work and the trillions and trillions go to bailout companies that were buying back their own stock with their cash reserves. I mean, it's redundant to even talk about it at this point because it's so obvious. But, I mean, that's how I view it. I mean, I really view the money they're sending to the people as, you know, buying a vote and the rest of it to float the 1% or the 1% of the 1% and make sure that they're comfortable when this is all done. But to back to my point, I think people are starting to realize that. Yeah. No, there's a reason why Trump held up the checks being printed to have his name put on them.

It's a financial transaction that occurred. But it's laughable, right? Like nobody can live off a 1200 bucks. Like that doesn't even cover most people's rent. Yeah. I mean, and by the time you've gotten it, we're on to month two and month three and month four, you know, or however long this is going to go. I have no idea. Yeah. The best way to do it is to fix the fucking pandemic.

So people can get back to work and make money on their own, but they can get back to working at home, I guess, which is the future. It's funny. We talk about remote work. What's interesting. Obviously people will leave the cities to some degree,

but also all, all of the infrastructure in a city like New York city. I mean, there's a, you know, a huge percentage of the restaurants, the transit authority, all of those things depend on people being in the office next door.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's going to be a huge economic impact, even when this is all over, if it changes the way that, you know, work is structured. Yeah. I, I, yeah. And there'll be plenty of people who are like, I'm not, I'm not going outside for, for a year until they have a vaccine and then by then you know maybe it's a flu season right yeah i mean the the world is a dangerous place being alive is a risky affair and like i think people's idea of risk exposure has changed during all of this for better or worse. Um, and yeah,

I just don't think people will be willing to tolerate as much physical risk as they, they used to. And that'll change the way that'll change everything about our sort of economy or culture. It'll be interesting to see. I agree. So I had a number of people on a totally different topic ask me to ask you why you stopped trading and sort of have turned to, I guess, shit posting or commentary as a result. Was there a reason? Because I think a lot of people remember you early on crypto Twitter as a pretty prolific trader. So haven't stopped trading to be honest i should have said stop sharing your trades yes the the reason i stopped sharing my trades was i mean it's almost become like a meme in the community where people give me shit constantly under any fucking tweet about

dragon chain right and like that was one of the big coins these seven people told me to ask you when dragon chains get its target so and then people are like why doesn't he announce his And like, that was one of the big coins. Seven people told me to ask you when you can change target. So, and then people are like, why doesn't he announce his trades anymore? Because like, I I'm just so tired. Scott, it's been years. You're telling me. I, I, yeah, I know. So I'm like, and frankly, there came a point when I, I think it was around like 50,000 followers where I tweet about like a low cap project and it would be like,

yeah, I'd be like, well, I probably shouldn't. And then, you know, people would complain about it. And I was like, you know what? Enough. I'm just, I'm not sharing any calls anymore. I don't trade a lot of weight. I'm not like a gainsy. I'm not out there trading millions of dollars. This is a hobby for me and it always has been. And, you know, I've had in 2007, I had a great 2017. I did well and I took most of that off the table because I just, I didn't want that much exposure anymore. And so now I just do it casually. I like it, but I'm more interested really in kind of working on projects or working,

you know, on building new cool stuff. And maybe that's... So you were basically taking a beating with no upside. What was even the point for you? You know, you weren't selling a paid group, so to speak, or, you know, pumping and dumping or anything. So you were basically just putting yourself out there to be criticized. Yeah. It's just pure dopamine at this point now and the ego,

but you know, it's, it, it is nice to have that level of influence in the community. Like if I, I can basically dictate an entire conversation if I want to on Twitter all day about a certain topic. So it's nice, but yeah, you're right. There is real, really no upside to the Twitter account anymore. It is an amazing place to get a sentiment check. Like you just said, if you want to drive a conversation and see how irrational both sides are, you're in a position where you can basically just throw it out there and watch it. Watch the carnage. Yeah. And I've

made a lot of friends now too. So I'm like, part of it's like a social thing for me is like, you know, getting on and seeing what everyone else is working on or what they're thinking or, you know, it really is an amazing community. I mean, we obviously talk about, you know, the negative sides of it and whatever, but 99% of it, it really is a pretty incredible place. For sure. Cool, man. Well, I think that about wraps it up. So where should everybody follow you after this?

Yeah. Check out Twitter. Follow your products, but more, more, more importantly, follow Aaron alpha market. Yeah. Those links to those accounts and, and everything are in my twitter bio but alpha market.io and uh arrowchain.io are the the two web addresses so yeah if you're a if you're a developer or a freelancer or a consultant or you know you run any sort of trading bot or something check out alpha market it's free to free to sign um, free to post listings. And, you know, we take a modest fee and then 98%, 98% of it's ours. Um, but you know,

that's, uh, it's free money. If, uh, if, if somebody signs up for your service, I mean, I guess you have to do the work, but I have to ask one last question, just out of sheer curiosity, why, why the Zach Morris avatar? You know, I guess maybe it's my position as an elder millennial, but I grew up watching Saved by the Bell. And I like, he's kind of a jerk, but he's sort of cocky. It just, it sort of fit the personality I was going for. And I, I think I'd told this on a different podcast one time, my, my original name on crypto Twitter, when I had like 200 followers was crypto bull.

And then I realized there was already a crypto bull who had like 200,000 followers or something. And it was a really cool dude. So I was like, I'll just add a Y and that's kind of how the bully moniker came about. It was more of an accident. And then I was like, well, what would a bully do? Who's a good bully? And then I had Gordon Gekko for a while. That makes sense too. Yeah. Yeah. He's kind of a scam artist. So I was like, all right, I'll just settle with Zach Morris. He's not fleecing people out of cash.

That's awesome. Great story. Well, thank you, man, so much. I appreciate the time. I'm glad that after all these months, we finally got an excuse to sit down and talk. Yeah. Sorry it took me so long, but... I'm sure it was my fault as well. Better late than never, right? All right, man. I look forward to keeping up with the projects and putting some of my own services up on Alpha Market. Sounds good. Thanks, Scott.